Family offers joyous log-balancing and wood-chucking spectacular

Cirque Alfonse brings Timber! to Brighton Dome Concert Hall to start the New Year off in style (January 2-4).

Their performance is inspired by exploits of the first North-American lumberjacks, loggers and farmers, explains spokesman Chris Challis.

“Timber! is a joyous, log-balancing, wood-chucking spectacular from a family of circus-performers. Blending circus with theatre, dance, live traditional music and the folklore of their native Quebec, Cirque Alfonse take the audience on a wild ride of gravity-defying acrobatics and thrilling tricks with metal saws, axes and logs all taken from the family farm. You can almost smell the fresh-cut pine!

“Established in 2005, Cirque Alfonse is a company made up of three generations of one Quebequois family. Alain Carabinier – a former ski champion, amateur clown and grandfather in his late 60s – performs alongside his adult offspring Antoine Carabiner Lépine and Julie Carabiner Lépine, a trained circus acrobat and a trained professional dancer respectively. Julie’s partner Jonathan, a trained circus acrobat who has performed in Cirque Du Soleil’s Love, also takes to the stage, as does their two-year-old son Arthur, who appears from time to time. The circus family is supported by three talented and versatile musicians, Josianne Laporte, David Boulanger and Andre Gagne.

“The story behind the family circus troupe is a charming one. Grandfather Alain Carabinier’s dream when growing up in Switzerland was to run away with a circus. Instead, he became a champion skier and travelled around the world. He met and fell in love with a French Canadian woman while in Ecuador, and together they moved to rural Quebec. There, they had two children, Antoine and Julie.

“As a 60th birthday present, the siblings created a circus show called La Brunante for Alain to star in. The show – albeit quite short – served as a very successful first experience into the world of circus, laying the foundation for what would later become Timber!

“Together, this brave and creative group of young performers is blazing a creative path that no one has yet dared to explore, blending the arts and techniques of the circus and infusing them with traditional Quebec folklore.”